


Beth Sydd O Dan Y Gwely?

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Born Of The Third Realm [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst, Arguing, Aromantic Sherlock Holmes, Childhood, Demons, Friendship, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Humor, Kid Fic, POV John Watson, Puberty, Welsh John Watson, Wings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-13 14:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4526442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is the monster under John Watson's bed.</p><p>Or at least, he was, once upon a time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Monster Text Post](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/135282) by dajo42. 



> Welsh translations, if you'd like them, are in the bottom notes!

“John,” Mam says, and she speaks quietly, looking down at John with a very serious expression on her face. At seven years old, John stands proudly, his head raised and his gaze particular as he looks up at her: Harry's not anywhere to be seen at the moment, as she'd gone out with Dad to Bala, and it's just him and his mam. “Would you do me a _big_ favour?”

“What, Mam?” John asks, because he does try and be helpful, studious and well-meaning as he is – John, unlike Harry, isn't an aggressive child unless he's pushed to be, and he doesn't have the same moods she does.

“Can you swap rooms with your big sister?” John stares at her. Is this a trick? Harry, after all, has a bigger room than John does, and her room overlooks the river, and being able to have a better room than Harry does isn't all that much of a favour, John doesn't think.

“Why?” John asks, suspiciously, and his mam smiles down at him.

“Well- Harry's got it in her head that there's a monster in her room. And you're a big boy, and you won't have such silly ideas, will you?”

“Harry's bigger than I am,” John points out, furrowing his brow: Harriet's mentioned no monster to him, but then, they're not really on speaking terms at the moment, since he ruined a pair of her shoes with a bit of ill-placed mud. “And she's older.” Harry is, in fact, eight to John's seven, but she does have several inches on him so far.

“Yeah, babe, but she's got a more active imagination than you've got, you know?” Mam says, and, without any more hesitation, John gives a nod of assent, and he follows her upstairs to help her swap their mattresses around and swap their clothes and stuff. The bedrooms are just decorated in soft greens, and John wouldn't mind the swap even if Harry was the sort of girl who liked her room to be bright pink – her window is the biggest, with the wonderful cushioned window seat, and there's just more _space_ in her room.

John has definitely won here, especially when she's just gone over a silly little _monster_.

\---

John yawns as he pads into his new bedroom, crawling up to the bed and dropping into it. He slides easily under the quilt, enjoying the wonderful warmth of it around his body, and he looks towards the window. He'd left the curtains wide open, and the full moon shines white through the glass, leaving a square silhouette of pale colour on the wood floor of the room.

Moonlight reflects off the shiny metal of his metal bedposts (John and Harriet's beds had been the same second hand, but they're wonderful big beds for adults, with double mattresses and metal frames, and John _loves_ them), and John smiles a little, dreamily, as he feels his eyes close-

And then there's a noise.

It's not a nice noise, but a sort of sharp, sudden grind, and John frowns, raising his head slightly and listening. He's sleepy, but not sleepy enough to ignore a weird noise like _that_. It goes again, like the noise Dad's saw makes if it catches wood at the wrong angle, and then there's a sudden, unpleasant clatter, like pieces of china clicking together.

And then there's a creak of a floorboard, and John suddenly feels very cold and very scared under his quilt, because the only creaky floorboard in Harriet's room – now John's room – is under the bed. All of his hairs seem to be standing on end as it creaks again, slowly this time, followed by the strange clatter and a metallic grind, and John freezes in his place before pulling the quilt over his head and pressing himself as tightly to the mattress as he can manage.

He can't sleep, can't even relax, holding his breath and being thankful that both of his feet were already folded safe and warm under the thickness of the blanket. The noises go on, and on, and then they move with a sort of slick, slippery sound, and then there's silence.

For a few long seconds John just lies there in the quiet, listening hard for some sort of noise, but he hears none at all. It takes him a few minutes to get up the courage, but then he slowly – very slowly, so slowly you'd think it was a slow motion replay of a rugby try on the telly – draws the quilt back from his head, and he stares.

Harry's monster lies in the moonlight, curled in a ball like Butterscotch (the family cat, who was actually the colour of black ink, despite her ginger-y name) curls up in the sun. It's not really made like Butterscotch is, though – it's a pure white, its skin leathery-looking and reflecting some of the moon's shine, and it's got a _tail_.

John sits up in bed, leaning forwards to peer at it: it's curled in a ball on the floor, but its feet don't look all that different from John's feet, and its hands are almost like John's, but bigger, and slimmer, and there's a crop of thick, black hair on the thing's head that just doesn't look right – like it's been drawn for a cartoon instead of the real world.

“Helo?” John asks, in a loud whisper. The thing doesn't move. “Helo?” he repeats, and then, “Shwmae, anghenfil.” The monster stirs, and it raises its head. John stares at its marble-white face, with the bizarrely strange, angular shape of it – bones come right from its cheeks and its chin, like little horns, and small indents and rounded growths symmetrically trace the lines of its face, up its scaly nose and over its black brows, tracing the sides of its lips and its chin.

It figures Harry would be scared of something so _cool_.

It begins to slither forwards, and John stares at it, wide-eyed with utter wonder, at the graceful, serpentine movements, with its hands and feet not even touching the floor: it moves to slide and settle at the foot of John's big adult bed, its head tilting and its tail curling around the metal bars of the bed behind it.

It doesn't weigh down the mattress when it sits, though, one of its legs dangling from the bed, and it doesn't wear any clothes – it doesn't even have a willy, John notes with fascination, and it doesn't have any _nipples_ , either, but it has legs and arms and a head and stuff, just like John does.

It's just a different colour, and it has _horns_.

Like this, John can see its eyes, bigger than John's are even though the two of them aren't so different in size, big and iridescently blue and green.

“Shwmae,” John says again, before beginning to wonder if monsters speak Welsh. Dad says Maggie Thatcher's a monster, and _she_ doesn't speak Welsh, but then, he thinks he's sort of joking about her being a monster, really.

The monster tilts its head from the right to the left, and as it does so it makes the clicking, clattering noise once more – John realizes with a sort of grossed-out curiosity that the clattering is the noise the monster's spinal bones make as it moves its neck. It opens its mouth, and John can't help but let out a little _wow_ at its teeth – six rows of them, John can count! – even as it seems to rearrange them into a mouth more like John's, sucking in its chin and jaw bones.

Opening and closing its mouth once more, now looking a bit more like John, it repeats, voice grinding and hissing like Harry's skateboard base on metal, “ _Shwmae_.”

“Ah, ti'n siarad Cymraeg!” It stares at John, tilts its head once more, and then furrows its black eyebrows. “Oh. Um. Rdych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?”

“I do not understand,” it says in such a low, impossibly resonant voice that John leans back, his own eyes widening. His dad has a very deep voice, but it's not deep like the white monster's is, and it doesn't vibrate through John's chest when he talks, like this monster's does. It's not like the grindy noise he'd made saying hi, but then, John supposes it's not used to making its tongue make words.

Its tongue is the same deep black as its hair, and it's very, very long.

“Oh,” John says. “Sorry. My dad did say that monsters don't speak Welsh,” John whispers with a shrug. The monster peers at him, its expression very difficult to read – not because it's not making an expression, John is pretty certain, but simply because its monster face is very different than human faces.

“This is your language?”

“Welsh, yeah,” John says, and he wonders why he _isn't_ scared, when the thing before him is most definitely a monster, and she'd been so scared. “Um, **are** you a monster?” It stares at him for a few moments more, its large eyes unblinking – John realizes it hasn't blinked at all, since it slithered up onto John's bed, and he wonders what it must be like not having to blink. Brilliant, probably.

“Are _you_?”

“No!” John says, a bit defensively as he pushes out his chest. “I'm a boy!”

“Aren't _I_ a boy?” it asks, as if it doesn't know.

“Dunno. Don't think so. You don't look like one.” John worries for a moment that what he's said was a bit insulting, and so he does, “Er, but don't worry, though. My sister's not a boy, and she's alright. I'm John.”

“ _John_ ,” it repeats, and John finds he likes the way the monster says his name – not because of a certain tone or anything, but just because it's voice is so very deep, and it makes his name sound so very, _very_ important. “I don't have a name.”

“Oh,” John says, with a bit of sympathy on his face. “I'm sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” it asks, its tail flicking behind its body, playing with the cool bars of John's bed without turning back to look at them.

“Because that's sad, isn't it? Not having a name? I don't know what I'd do without a name.” Its brows move again, but it doesn't look like it's thinking this time – this time, it looks _sad_ , like it wants a name but doesn't have one.

“It’s alright, monster! Um, I’ll give you a name, uh–” John tries to think of something monstrous, but nothing really comes to mind except his PE teacher.

But then, Mr Sherrinford is a pretty fearsome man, and-

“Can I choose a name?” it asks, interrupting the flow of John’s thoughts with confidence and a crisp, deep tone, and John blinks at it, the expression owlish, but then he thinks about it. Harry's name is actually Harriet, but she asks to be called Harry and she seems to like it, and John's Mamgu's actual name is Kathleen, but everybody calls her Jo.

And besides, those are all people – they're not monsters.

“Uh, yeah, I think so,” John says, trying his best to sound more authoritative on the subject than he is. It pauses, thinking for a few moments. John thinks that this monster seems to think a lot, and he's almost sorry it doesn't talk like Harriet does without thinking at all, simply because its voice is so very, very nice to listen to.

“Sherlock.” says the monster, drawing out the “sh” and the hard “k” sound of the lock.

“That’s a nice name,” John says politely, while privately believing it to be a very silly name indeed. A silly name for a boy, or a girl, but then, Sherlock is neither.

“Mmm,” the monster agrees, and it continues to stare unnervingly at John. John doesn't complain, though, and he just sits there with his legs crossed under the thick warmth of the quilt, staring right back. “Why do you do that with your eyes?” John blinks. “That.”

“Oh,” John says, somewhat surprised – doesn't this monster know anything? It doesn't speak Welsh, and it doesn't know if it's a boy or not, and now its name is Sherlock, and it doesn't know what blinking's for. “Oh, well, s'called blinking. You blink, and it makes your eyes wet.”

“Why?” Sherlock asks.

“So they can move. Lubrication.” The monster tilts its head. John elects to demonstrate, because even though its face doesn't look all that confused, it doesn't seem to understand, and John rolls his eyes in an exaggerated way. Fascinated, Sherlock crawls forwards, and it puts his hands on either side of John's face, clasping – ever so gently – at John's face. Its hands are webbed between its fingers like a sort of frog's, cool and dry and _scaly_ like Geraint Little's snake from in the village, and up close like this John can smell the monster, but it doesn't smell _horrible_.

The monster smells like the wild flowers and strawberries that sprout up in the woods during August, sweet and pleasant and lovely, but Sherlock doesn't seem to care about how it smells, and is instead peering curiously at John's eyes. Up close, John now sees that its eyes are in sockets, sort of, but they seem to be fixed, and they don't move like John's do.

“Do it again,” Sherlock says, and John won't be told what to do like a monster.

“Not unless you say please,” John says stoutly.

“What is please?”

“It's polite.”

“Do it again, please.”

“Actually, you should say it in Welsh.” John says, as an afterthought.

“Welsh?”

“My language. Proper language – better than English.”

“Oh.”

“It's os gwelwch yn fawr.” John says.

“Os gwelwch yn fawr,” the monster says in a tone that's not really polite at all, but John supposes he's nitpicked enough without making him be even more polite, especially given that the monster doesn't seem to know what being polite _is_. Especially given that its Welsh pronunciation is alright – better than John's mam's. “Please.” John rolls his eyes again, and Sherlock leans in close, fascinated.

“That is interesting,” the monster proclaims, as if it's a compliment on John's magnificent eyerolling.

“Oh,” John says. “Um, thank you?” The monster sits back, and after craning its neck (its neck is very, very long when the monster wants it to be) to look at the way John's legs are crossed, it copies the position, setting its hands into his lap and making the same pose with only a few inches between them. “Um, look, I'm really sorry, er, Sherlock, but it's really late and I'm super tired.”

“What is tired?” Sherlock asks.

“When you need to sleep,” John supplies.

“Oh, yes,” Sherlock says, with a small inclination of his white head. Up close, his hair doesn't actually look all that wet – it's just very, very fine, and John reaches up slowly to touch it. The monster doesn't complain, and instead just watches John's face as he feels the hair under his touch: it's so very, _very_ smooth, almost like it's made of a sort of dried liquid, and John runs his fingers through a few of those inky curls, fascinated. “What's wrong with it?”

“Nothing. It's just not the same as my hair. It's nice,” John tells the monster quietly, and he draws his hands back before saying, “Um, can you move over to the other side of the bed? I can't lie down.” The monster does, sitting on the opposite corner to John's, and John lies down on his side, facing the window again. John glances at him, and he sees that the monster is staring down at him where he lies. “Why are you here, Sherlock?” It occurs to John that perhaps it's very strange that it only occurred to him to ask that _now_ , but the monster is just so interesting to look at, so **fascinating**.

“Go to sleep, John,” the monster says, either not hearing the question or choosing not to answer it. “You need to.” And Sherlock’s right, John supposes, so he does.

 


	2. Chapter 2

When John wakes up, Sherlock is nowhere to be seen. It isn't settled where it had been, cross-legged on the corner of John's bed, comfortable and starkly white in contrast to John's red race-car sheets and the dark behind it. It's not dark at all, now, and sunlight streams in through the window. John leans, putting his hands to steady himself on the side of the mattress before leaning forwards and looking with curiosity underneath.

Nothing is there.

The boards are plain under John's mattress, all looking completely normal except for the one creaky board, which has three nails keeping it in place to the floor instead of four at each corner. John clambers out of bed and walks over to the window, pulling up the cushioned seat that settles under the window, but there's nothing in the chest except the board games John and his mam had neatly set inside there yesterday.

John puts back the seat and pulls back the curtains, looking inside those too, and then he opens the doors of the wardrobe, wondering if Sherlock is perhaps hanging from his feet from a coat hanger, like a bat might, but the only things in the wardrobe are John's winter clothes and the suit had had to wear to his English grandma's funeral last year.

“John?” He turns, and he looks to the doorway, where his mother stands with raised eyebrows, looking at him with amusement. “What are you looking for?”

“The monster,” John supplies as an answer, “Its name is Sherlock.” His mam looks somewhat surprised by the answer, but she doesn't complain, and just lets out a surprised little laugh.

“Alright,” she says, and then adds, “Well, it's time to come to breakfast, babe.” John nods his head and leaves the room, bare feet comfortable on the carpet of the stairs.

Breakfast is alright – John decides, rather pensively, as he eats his cereal, that perhaps the monster was a dream, or perhaps it's scared of the light like some children are scared of the dark, or maybe just that it didn't much like that John had come into the room instead of Harriet, and decided to leave.

“Did the monster make the noises?” asks Harry, chin raised like she's a bit defiant – John guesses she's ready to fight him about swapping rooms back, but he doesn't want his old room back, not when hers is so much better.

“Yeah,” John says, not much wanting to risk changing Harry's mind about the whole situation. “Didn't sleep. It was really scary.”

“Well, I'm not swapping back!” Harry proclaims sharply, cutting fiercely into her bacon and shoving a piece of the meat into her mouth. John shrugs his shoulders.

“Alright,” he says easily, and she looks mildly taken aback by his not fighting her on it, but John has the room, and he's not _ever_ going to give it back, even if the monster does come back tonight. It's a nice enough monster, anyway, so what's the harm?

John doesn't stay in the house that Saturday, and instead moves out to play with some of the other lads in Fron-goch – Geraint Little is out today, and with a brilliantly skinned knee all bloody down the side, which John and a few of the other boys admire before they move off towards the river.

\---

“Oh, John, you're _soaked_!” Dad complains as John comes down the path towards the house, and John shrugs his shoulders, regarding his father with raised eyebrows. This summer is pretty warm, really, and the day hadn't been too windy – they'd spent most of the day by the rocks of the river with nets in their hands, trying to catch minnows and small fish, but they'd not really managed anything.

Kit McAster had insisted he'd once caught a pike in the river once, using a spoon on the end of a line to catch in its mouth so it couldn't bite through the line, but John is fairly sure that that's just not true – not that he'd say so.

“Fell in,” John says helpfully, and he holds up his arm with pride, displaying the half-gritty graze up the length of his forearm. His dad winces, and gestures for John to come forwards and into the house.

He leaves his shoes and socks and jumper on the doorstep, laying them out in the sun to dry off, and he dutifully lets his father pick the stone and dust out of his new wound before setting an antiseptic into the ripped skin. It hurts, burning over the opened-up flesh, but his dad is gentle about the whole thing and it's happened before, after all. Harry and John don't really kick up much fuss when they've hurt themselves, and when they were younger it was a sort of competition for neither of them to display to the other that they were actually in pain, so by now it's just automatic not to cry and wail about stuff.

John's bath is actually more uncomfortable for the graze than the antiseptic was, but the water soothes away the cool in his skin from tripping and falling in the river, and by the time he's out he doesn't feel cold at all.

He pulls on his pyjamas with a yawn, crawling into bed and pulling a book into his lap from his side table: it's _The Twits_ , by Roald Dahl, and he's making slow progress, but he is enjoying it. John likes to read, really, and this is a Welsh translation, so it's not so hard to get through as an English one would be.

He doesn't know how long he reads, but then the clattering noise comes, and John leans, dropping his head over the edge of his bed and looking under his bed. The monster doesn't crawl up from under the floorboards _or_ appear suddenly, but sort of slowly materializes, folding itself out from its own tail with the loud, horrible noise of its bones.

John has to wonder why its bones make such a loud noise, but he supposes if he tried to fold himself out from a square he'd make a lot of noise about it too. Soon enough, Sherlock lies there on its belly, its hands splayed on the wood and its expression concentrated on John. John leans back as the monster crawls out from under his bed and slides to settle at the foot of John's bed again.

In the light from John's bed lamp, the monster looks different – the warm shine of the light bulb reflects off his skin in a way the smooth moonlight doesn't do. The monster doesn't complain about it, and John doesn't point it out.

“Shwmae,” John says politely.

“Shwmae,” the monster responds, and when John smiles, it tries to smile back, but the expression is strange, pinched in the wrong places and emphasized strangely, and John would laugh, except he doesn't want to upset the monster that lives under his bed.

“Why _do_ you come from under my bed?” John asks casually.

“Why do you sleep over where I come from?” responds Sherlock smoothly, its lovely voice low and smooth, and John considers the returning question.

“Dunno,” John says, “'Cause Harry was scared of you.”

“Harry is your sister?” John nods his head, and they settle in silence for a few moments, just staring at each other. John likes the way the monster looks, with its strange skin and body and not-wet watery hair, but he doesn't know if Sherlock finds him equally interesting.

“What are you?” John asks, curiosity plain in his voice, and Sherlock tilts its head with a quiet click.

“I'm Sherlock,” it answers, and John frowns.

“That's _who_ you are.”

“Oh.”

“Are you a monster?” asks John. “Because I've been thinking of you as a monster, and you don't look like a boy or a girl.”

“Don't know,” Sherlock says. “I'll ask my brother.”

“You have a brother?” Sherlock inclines its head, the spikes on its chin brushing its own neck, and John wonders what they feel like – he's never seen anything with horns before, not up close, not even a goat. “Well, are you a he or a she?”

“What are _you_?” Sherlock asks, the question a bit like an accusation, but John doesn't say so. “We do not have different pronouns in my tongue.” Pronouns, John guesses, are the words for words like he and she and you and stuff. John had, though, just assumed the monster was _English_ , but then, he's never seen English monsters on the television, so he supposes it wasn't really fair to assume he was English just because he spoke it.

“Well, I'm a he. 'Cause I'm a boy.” Sherlock shrugs its shoulders as if it doesn't matter (John suppose sit doesn't to monsters).

“ _He_ will do,” Sherlock proclaims magnanimously, and John regards him with an undisguised interest on his features.

“How old are you?” John asks, then.

“Old?” Sherlock repeats, even as he snakes forward a hand and slowly removes the book from John's lap, examining it, analysing it, with his unblinking, still eyes. He touches the paper of the pages gently with his clawed fingers, apparently making sure he doesn't rip them, and then he draws the book to inhale it.

John charitably elects not to point out that books aren't for sniffing.

“Yeah. I'm _seven_.”

“Seven what?”

“Seven years old,” John says, because really, even if he doesn't speak English all that well (and John doesn't speak English brilliantly _either_ ), he should at least know how old he is. Sherlock looks up from _The Twits_ , his lips pressed together – if they can be called lips, really, because they don't look like John's lips, with their scaly edge.

“A year is one rotation of this earth about the sun, yes?” Sherlock asks and John gives him a funny look, but then nods.

“Then I am… Four.”

“ _Four!?_ ” John repeats loudly, forgetting to speak quietly, but then he claps a hand over his own mouth, stopping himself from saying anything more. How can this monster be _four_? He's as big as John is, even though his limbs are spindly and he's very, very thin, but four years old?

“Not _precisely_ four. I celebrated the last anniversary of my birth one hundred and seventeen days ago. It is a ceremony wherein-”

“Yeah, we have birthdays too,” John says, interrupting Sherlock before he can keep going, and Sherlock seems surprised, but then he nods his big, white head in comprehension. Sherlock pages through the _The Twits_ , feeling the texture of the paper under his leathery fingers, and John watches him. His indignation at speaking to a four year old is not forgotten, but it no longer seems relevant.

Then, Sherlock hands the book back before sliding from John's bed with all the slow, liquid grace of melting snow, moving to settle himself on the floor in the moonlight once more. John sets the book aside, flicking off the light, and then he pads out of bed, settling himself on the window seat. He drags his quilt with him, and once he's sat, wraps it around his shoulders and tucks his suddenly-cool feet under his bum. Sherlock, who had adopted the cross-legged position he'd learned from John last night, stares at him before looking at the space beside him on the bench.

“You can sit here with me, if you like,” John offers. “Do you like how the moon feels?”

“It warms my skin,” Sherlock says, but he takes John up on the offer all the same, moving forwards and clambering to settle beside him, once more copying John's seated position and sitting with one leg folded under his backside, the other dangling against the floor. His tail curls around his own arm, lacking somewhere else to go, John supposes, and they look out at the river together. It looks grey like this, with the moon shining on it, and John thinks it's ever so pretty.

He thinks he'll try to draw it tomorrow.

“Do you not like the sun?” John asks.

“The sun is fine,” Sherlock says non-committally. He doesn't look at John as he answers, and his big, lidless eyes stare out over the river and the trees; his tail, as he stares out, unhooks itself from around his arm and begins to swing pendulously behind his body, like some sort of big cat's.

“But you weren't here yesterday.” Sherlock glances at him.

“I was,” Sherlock says.

“In the day time.”

“Oh. No, I returned to my home as sun began to rise,” Sherlock agrees, examining John with a swift, cursory look. John is pretty sure he's as weird-looking and funny-sounding to Sherlock as the monster is to him, so he tries not to fidget under the cold stare.

“Why?”

“My brother called for me,” Sherlock answers simply, and then he says, “I prefer it here. Your sister never spoke to me. Until very recently, I do not believe she noticed my presence.” He speaks funny, this monster – not just 'cause he speaks English, but he's only _four_ , and he looks more like John's size, but he talks like an adult. Not even a normal adult, neither – like one of those politicians on the telly.

“Don't your mam and dad get upset you're not at home?”

“Oh, no,” Sherlock says, and then there's a pregnant pause; he meets John's gaze with his eyes, and John can't help but think about how _different_ they are to John's – they're very big, of course, but it's the colour John loves. They're a sort of grey-green, like the shallow sea at Barry Island, flecked with bits of blue and black, and they just seem so much _deeper_ than other people's eyes. “I'm out of the way here.”

“Out of the way?” John repeats, frowning slightly.

“I cause trouble.” The words are said succinctly, with a slightly clipped tone, and Sherlock turns his head away again, so John guesses he doesn't really want John to ask about it. He doesn't want to just sit in silence, though, and he doesn't want to go to bed, and he feels _bad_ for the monster sat beside him.

“You can always come here, when you want,” John says, even though the monster is already here, and hadn't asked John's permission to come, or Harriet's. “In the day too, I mean.” Sherlock freezes for half a second, and then gives a tiny, tiny nod.

“Thank you.” A pause. “John.” John smiles at him, and Sherlock offers something almost like a smile in return. It does look a bit weird, though.

\---

Sherlock is gone again when John wakes up, his head leaning against the cool glass of the window, and he sits up, hiding his yawn behind his hand as he blearily glances around. He must have fallen asleep sat with the monster, sat on the window seat. His neck doesn't hurt too much, though, and he pads towards the bed, throwing up his quilt and smoothing it out on the bed.

John is a tidy boy, really – Harriet's a bit messier than he is, but really the both of them mostly put things away and don't leave things on the floor or anything. Mam usually praises them for that when she's pointing out that Dad _does_ forget to put things away and leaves stuff on the floor.

It starts to rain during breakfast, and John decides going out in it would be less than fun, so instead he goes back to his room and pushes the door closed, turning on his radio and curling up with _The Twits_ on the window seat again. With a break for lunch, he finishes it up a little after one, and he's just moving to get up and maybe try and sneak outside despite the rain when a resonant voice asks, “What's a karma chameleon?”

John looks stares at Sherlock for a few seconds, a bit surprised he missed the grinding and carrying on from under his bed, and then looks to the radio. The song's been on a few times today, and John hadn't really been paying attention.

“Um, dunno, really,” John admits with a shrug. “I know the bloke that sings it is a bit funny looking.”

“How so?”

“Well, he wears make-up and that, and has long hair, wears feathers and flowers in it,” answers John. “Looks nice, though.” Sherlock peers at him with a sort of curiosity – at least, John thinks it's curiosity. Sherlock's face is a bit difficult, really, but John thinks he's getting the hang of it. “D'you want to play?”

Sherlock breathes in, his pale nostrils widening to do so, and then he gives a nod of his head. “Do you have chess?”

“Oh. Er. Yeah, but I don't know how to play it-- why don't we play Operation?”

“If you like. I don't know how to play.”

“Oh, it's really easy! Well. Not easy, but, er, you know. Straightforward, like,” John says, and Sherlock inclines his head.

\---

“Practising your English, yeah, John?” his mam asks as John comes down the stairs for tea, Sherlock having (not really all that politely) declined to join him.

“Sherlock doesn't speak Welsh,” John says nonchalantly, “He's got a posh English accent, but he's not English neither.” Mam laughs a little, affectionately ruffling John's hair as he sits down beside his dad.

“Where's he from?”

“Under my bed, I suppose,” John answers, and he ignores the look his mam and dad share – they always do that when they think they're being clever. He usually ignores it, and then usually think he and Harry don't notice: honestly, parents can be really short-sighted.

\---

“How come you didn't come down to tea?” John asks as he enters his room again: Sherlock is dangling from John's curtain rail by white, clawed feed, examining his curtains from upside-down. He's a bit of a weirdo, John thinks privately, but for all he knows monsters find it pretty normal to look at people's bedroom curtains.

Sherlock looks at him, and then says, “Not really meant to show myself to humans.”

“What about me?”

“You're not a human. You're a boy.” Sherlock says, and despite his trying his hardest not to be mean, John laughs. Sherlock looks very, very annoyed, his brows and horns furrowing and his chin spikes shifting on his face. “What?”

“Boys _are_ humans. I'm not an _alien_.” Sherlock's face begins to turn grey, the bottoms of his horns, his neck and sides of his cheeks darkening into the colour, and John rushes forwards, looking at him with immense interest. “What's _that_? That's **brilliant!** ”

“It's called blushing,” Sherlock mutters, trying his best to be moody about offering the answer, but apparently a bit disarmed by John's sudden delight.

“That's not _blushing._ Blushing's when you go pink.”

“Blushing is caused by a vasodilation of the blood vessels, triggered by excitement or embarrassment or in order to regulate one's heat. _Your_ blushing will be pink, because your blood is red. Mine is black.” The trivia is offered a bit stiffly, and Sherlock tries to hold his chin stout, but because of his being upside down it just sort of serves to stop him from looking at John properly.

“I didn't know that,” John admits, and then says, “How'd you find that out?”

“I read.”

“Oh, really?”

“Mmm.”

“I'm sorry I laughed at you, Sherlock,” John says. Sherlock frowns, and then he squints up at John for a moment or two, like he's not used to being apologized to, but then Sherlock nods his head, and drops to the floor without so much as a _sound_ – he's even quieter than Butterscotch, if he wants to be. John thinks it's the tail. He wishes he had one.

“It's alright,” Sherlock says quietly. “I don't suppose it's too terrible, though. That you're a human, I mean. Other children can be alright, my papa says, it's just a matter of the adults being a bit, you know. Easily startled. That's somewhat characteristic of your species.”

“My mam'd be a bit startled, I guess,” John agrees. “Dad'd probably just say you're not as ugly as Thatcher.”

“What's Thatcher?”

“She's the Prime Minister.”

“What's that?”

“She runs the country. Well, I mean- We've also got a Queen, but I dunno how they split it. Maybe they take shifts.” Sherlock inclines his head, seeming to take this under consideration.

“Haven't you got a Prime Minister, you monsters?” John asks, picking up the window seat and reaching for the chess set out of it. Sherlock's still eyes seem to light up a bit at the sight of it, though, so John doesn't much mind learning to play – Sherlock had learned to play Operation, after all, and it'd only been fair.

“Our realm is governed by a meeting of the High Council, and disputes between realms are considered between our High Council and that of the Fae Alliance, as well as that of the Host.”

“What's the Host?” John asks, pretending to only not understand one word rather than most of what Sherlock had just said.

“It's what the angels call their governance system. Well, technically their governance system is hierarchical, but it's what they call the group of angels that talk to us and the Fae.” Sherlock seems to be quite knowledgeable about this sort of thing, more so than John is about his side, and John feels a bit awkward, but he can always ask his dad about how the whole Prime Minister-Queen labour share works.

“So you're an angel?” John asks, suddenly quite interested again, and Sherlock tilts his head, examining John with a mild twist of confusion to his mouth.

“No,” Sherlock says, “Do I look like one?” He sounds honestly very interested, and John watches him with similar fascination.

“Not really. Angels have blond hair, and they wear big white robes, don't they?” Sherlock looks _fascinated_ , and stares at John with a rapt expression on his weird, spiky face.

“ _Really_?”

“Yeah. Why, what did you think they looked like?”

“Don't know. You're not meant to look when they go past – it's worse than looking at the sun, my brother says,” Sherlock says, and John nods his head. His family doesn't really go in for going to church, but he has to pray at school, and he knows how people dress up for the angels in the nativity at Christmas

“What are you, then, if you're not an angel?”

“Well, I'm a demon, aren't I?” Sherlock says, as if it's obvious. John stares at him. “What?”

“What do you mean, you're a _demon_?” John squawks, indignant and confused – he's not scared, not really, because he likes Sherlock, but he'd seen a bit of the The Exorcist last year, when his mam and dad stayed up to watch it and he'd snuck downstairs to peer around the sofa at the screen. It'd not seemed like the sort of thing you wanted to be your friend, let alone living under your _bed_.

“Well, that's what I am,” Sherlock says, looking a little uncertain, and then he asks, “Is that not good?”

“Er--” John flounders, for a second or two, and then says, “Well, you know, demons are evil.”

“Evil?”

“Yeah.”

“What's evil?”

“What do you mean, what's _evil_?”

“Well, I don't know what that means,” Sherlock says. John just can't comprehend how he can know so much about vaso- vaso- well, _blushing_ and what have you, and not know what being _evil_ is.

“Well, it means that something's bad, but like, really bad. The sort of thing that can get you sent to Hell.”

“What's Hell?”

“Well, you should know. Demons live in Hell, don't they?” John is beginning to doubt if Sherlock's quite right about his being a demon. Sherlock tilts his head.

“We live in the third realm,” Sherlock says, looking a bit uncomfortable, and John can feel guilt tug at his stomach for making his new friend look suddenly so uncertain, but-- a _demon_? He can't be friends with a **demon** , can he? It's one thing to be friends with a sort of benevolent monster, but you don't really get benevolent demons.

“Er-- Well. I'm sure it's fine,” John says finally, the words coming out of his mouth a bit quickly. “Yeah. Don't worry about it.” John hadn't realized it, but Sherlock's white, bony shoulders had been very, very stiffly and squarely held, and when John tells him it's alright they suddenly relax, and he lets out a soft exhalation, looking **relieved**. “Um, Sherlock?” John asks, tone delicate.

“Mm?” Sherlock hums with his tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek – John doesn't think they do much humming where he's from, but he's quite good at it, really.

“Do you have many friends?”

“No,” Sherlock answers simply. He doesn't look away when John meets his gaze, and John squares his chin, looking the monster, the _demon_ , properly in the face.

“How many?”

“None,” Sherlock says. John feels a pang of sudden melancholy in his chest, and he sort of wants to give Sherlock a hug, but he does look rather sharp at the edges, and he's not completely sure Sherlock would know what a hug was if John tried.

“Well, that's not true,” John says defiantly.

“Actually, it is, I-”

“I'm your friend,” John insists before Sherlock can keep going, and Sherlock stops short before breaking out into a soft, pleasant smile.

“Really?” Sherlock asks.

“Yeah. Yeah.” John puts out his right hand, and Sherlock stares at it blankly. Yeah, probably good John didn't try and hug him. “You put out your right hand.” Sherlock does. “And then you sort of hold them- yeah, like that, and you shake.”

“For what purpose?”

“Uh,” John says, “Well. You just do that when you make friends, I suppose.”

“Oh. Alright,” Sherlock says, and he shakes John's hand. “My friend John.”

“And my friend Sherlock,” John agrees. “Nice to meet you.”

“We've already met.”

“You say “Nice to meet you as well,” Sherlock.”

“Oh. Right. Nice to meet you as well.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

“Can't you just make yourself invisible?” John asks, and Sherlock looks up from the black pieces of the chessboard, cocking his head to the side. He seems to take his time considering the idea, and then he fades from sight, dissolving as quickly and completely as a sugar cube in a cup of tea. John stares at the empty space where Sherlock had been less than a second before.

And then, Sherlock moves his bishop across the board. “Check,” Sherlock says triumphantly, and John lets out a sort of surprised laugh.

“You are _magnificent_ ,” John says delightedly, using a word Sherlock had used the day before to describe how the dead bird Butterscotch had caught had looked spattered across the paved path on the floor outside. There's a short pause. John can't see Sherlock's face like this, but the silence makes him wonder if he's made the monster uncomfortable, and he opens his mouth to apologize, but Sherlock speaks first.

“Do you really think so?” he asks, quietly.

“Yeah. Why, d'you not think you are?”

“I do. It's everyone else who seems to have a problem with the idea,” Sherlock says lowly. He doesn't say anything more, doesn't say thank you, and John moves his rook.

“Can you, um, make it so I can see you but no one else can? And so only I can hear you?” Sherlock reappears again, like dissolving in reverse, and then he gives a nod of his head, and a small smile. He's learning to smile better now, doing it more naturally like John does, and even though his face wrinkles in the wrong places and stays smooth where it shouldn't, it looks good. Sherlock looks good, when he smiles.

“That's better,” John confesses, “I like to be able to see you.”

“I like to be able to see you as well,” Sherlock agrees in a grave tone.

“Well, that's different. You can see me.”

“Still.”

“Unless we play hide and seek.”

“Hide and seek?”

“One of us puts his hands over his eyes and counts to a hundred – the other one goes and hides.” Sherlock looks very interested in the idea of the game, but John knows full well after a few weeks of playing with him to set out the rules first. “You have to stay either in the house or inside the garden wall, and you have to remain not invisible.”

“Very well. Shall I hide first, or you?”

“Me!” John says, and he waits for Sherlock to put his hands over his eyes and begin to count. Sherlock's numbers get jumbled up a bit by the time he gets to 11 – John feels a bit bad, actually, given that Sherlock's only option is to count in English when the numbers are a bit hard, but it's too late to change that now. John rushes down the stairs and out into the garden, sliding into the little hollow inside the back of the summersweet bush.

He peers out through the parting of the leaves, watching the house door. It takes a little while – Sherlock's actually quite persnickety, really, and takes ages to do a lot of stuff, because he'll go around all the corners rather than just scanning. Soon enough, though, Sherlock comes out into the light.

He looks brilliant when the sun's on him: his skin is a bit like shiny leather, and the sun always shines off the white in a way that's just great to watch. Sherlock and John haven't played much outside, given that he's been nervous about John's parents seeing, but now it's not a problem, John supposes.

“ _Ah!”_ Sherlock says triumphantly, and he runs over to the summersweet bush. John laughs, standing up and brushing the white flowers clinging to his body onto the ground. Sherlock inhales, his wide nostrils flaring, and he beams at John. “Me now?”

“Yeah,” John says, grinning right back. “Your go.”

They play for at least a few hours, running back and forth, inside and outside the house, and finally John drops onto the ground outside, laughing, as he breathes in desperate breaths. After a few moments for Sherlock to catch up, the demon drops down on his back beside John, copying his position as exactly as he can manage.

He tends to do that, when he's not sure how to do something. He just copies John.

“Are you alright?”

“Oh, yeah,” John says, glancing at Sherlock, and then he says, “Just tired.” Sherlock gives a little nod of his head, and he copies John's heavy breathing as they lie there.

“Alright, John?” asks John's mam as she comes outside, a basket of washing in her arms, and John offers her a little grin. Sherlock, beside him, is still and stiff and staring with his big, weird eyes, but John's mam doesn't even see him, of course. He's really quite good at this being invisible lark, John thinks

“Yeah. Just been playing.”

“What've you been playing?”

“Hide and seek.”

“Who with?”

“Sherlock,” John answers, and the demon turns his head sharply to look at John, but John's mam just laughs at him and then walks off towards the washing line. The monster is staring and staring at him, evidently very interested, and John shrugs his shoulders thoughtfully. “She can't see you. Thinks you're an imaginary friend.”

“Am I?” Sherlock asks. John can't help but wonder if demons have imaginary friends – he doubts it. They seem a serious sort, if Sherlock's anything to go by.

“Don't think so,” John says pleasantly enough. “Are you?”

“I don't know. Imaginary is made-up, is it not? I am not. The Fae are dependent on belief. We and the angels are not.”

“What does that mean? Dependent?”

“They rely on humans believing in them to survive,” Sherlock answers. His tone is a bit superior, and John gets the impression that if Sherlock didn't know so little about the human world he'd probably be telling John how stupid he is for not knowing that – but then, Sherlock might well decide to tell him that anyway. He does so, now and then, even though John isn't actually that stupid at all – Mam and Dad've talked about sending him off to a posh school for comprehensive, after all.

“So if I don't believe in faeries, they all die?”

“Well, no. Your belief as an individual is hardly a crucial concern. It's belief shared amongst thousands, millions, even. It's because they're less corporeal than we are.”

“What's corporeal?” Sherlock gives him a _look_ , and John says, rather defensively, “Well, s'not my fault you use fancy posh words, and in _English_ and all!” Sherlock frowns at him, and then crosses his arms over his chest, looking up at the sky for a few moments.

“It means that while we have solid bodies, the faeries are only half-solid,” Sherlock answers, a slight sheepishness heavy in his tone, and then he says, “If everyone stopped believing in them, they'd cease to exist.”

“Oh,” John says astutely. They lie there on the ground for a little while longer, both of them staring up at the blue sky, and John says, “Got school tomorrow.”

“What is that?”

“Er, education? You know. Learning and that.”

“Ah. Yes. You are in need of that,” Sherlock says, and John whips his head around to protest, but Sherlock's lips are quirked into a funny sort of little grin, and despite himself John laughs, elbowing the demon hard in the side. “For how many hours do you study?”

“Uh, from nine until four,” John says. “I'm at school that long, anyway.” Sherlock gives a nod of his head. John had explained to him now to tell the time last year, and Sherlock had picked it up much faster John had – it only took him half an hour. “We can still play at night, though.”

“I would enjoy that,” Sherlock says quietly. “I would enjoy that very much.”

\---

“Your school does _drag on_ so,” Sherlock complains when John comes into his bedroom. He's sat on John's window seat, a stack of unread books on his right and a stack of read ones on his left, because he reads like a-

Well. Like a demon. John doesn't think he really understood that expression all too well until he saw the way Sherlock reads – Sherlock reads “voraciously”, as Sherlock would call it, or as if it's the best thing to do in the world, as John would say.

“Yeah, well. I'm good at it,” John says defensively, and then says, “Besides, we played rugby today. I love rugby.”

“Rugby is the game with the physical contact and the bruises?” Sherlock says stuff with proper _derision_ (thanks for that word, Sherlock. Made Mrs Gibbs in Home Ec really do one, that word had) sometimes, but John is pretty much used to it by this point, and a demon's opinion on rugby isn't really all that important. It's not like Sherlock's third realm is gonna join the Six Nations.

“Yeah, that's right.”

“The game wherein one of your countrymen spat out two teeth on the television this day prior?”

“ _Yeah_ _,_ ” John says mildly defensively, and Sherlock lets out a haughty laugh.

“You are a very strange species,” Sherlock says wisely, and John _huffs_ at him. They play, that day, and then at night Sherlock settles upon John's window once again and reads in the dark as John sleeps – he doesn't mind, when Sherlock sits on the windowsill, likes to open his eyes and see the white silhouette in the moonlight, even if Dad keeps complaining about John sleeping with his curtains open.

Sherlock stays when John goes to school, day after day: most days when John returns he's sat on John's bed or on John's windowsill or laid on the floor or, on one particularly memorable Thursday afternoon when John had stayed for an hour after to play with Mr Turner's new projecting kit, laid on the ceiling.

Physics mean very little to Sherlock, apparently.

“How's it work on you, then? It's gravity, isn't it?”

“Yes, gravity. You understand how gravity works, yes?” Sherlock asks. John thinks.

“Er, well. The Earth makes us stick to it. Draws us in like a magnet. But that's without, er, us trying to jump up or anything. So when we jump up we jump up, but then we fall 'cause we're jumping any more.” Sherlock stares at John as if John just spat on his weird, white bare feet. “Something like that?”

“Something like that,” Sherlock says dryly, and then says, “Close enough. Well, gravity is dictated by the fact that something has mass. I don't necessarily have mass, if I don't choose to. Besides, I've magic.”

“You're not _magic_.”

“How do you suppose I work that portal under your bed, then? Think I've got a diesel engine for it?”

“Oh, _shut_ up.”

“I _have_.”

“You've _not!_ ” Sherlock snaps his fingers (John had shown him how to do that on Tuesday, and Sherlock had been really quite embarrassed about not having known how to do it before John had shown him, but he supposes finger snapping isn't actually much use to any humans, let alone demons) and conjures a flare of blue flame to hover over his palm. John stares at it, his eyes wide, and Sherlock squares his chin a bit. “That's _brilliant_.” There's a pause.

“Really?” Sherlock asks, even though John knows he definitely thinks it's brilliant, and is just a bit surprised that John agrees.

“Yeah! Oh, I'm sorry, Sherlock, I thought you was playing silly buggers.”

“Were.”

“What?”

“I thought you _were_.”

“Why's it were?”

“Was is for a singular. You is a plural.”

“What's a plural?”

“More than one.”

“You're not more than one.”

“Of course I am. I'm four.” John laughs, and Sherlock grins at him, his strange teeth bright and shining with all their weird rows.

“That's a stupid joke.”

“You laughed, though. What does that make you?”

“Stupid, I s'pose.”

“I always thought so.”

“Oi!”

\---

“Studying, are we?” Sherlock asks as he saunters out from under John's bed (John doesn't even know how he _manages_ to do that, but it's better than a loud grinding noise) and John rolls his eyes at him, pulling his book closer to him. Sherlock strides forth, plucks the textbook from his hands and walks straight past. “It's rude to ignore people, John.”

“Oh, you've learnt that now, have you?” John asks irritably, and he tries to snatch the book back, but Sherlock's _shot_ up in the past two years, now that John's ten and Sherlock's six, and he's almost twice John's height. It's bloody annoying is what it is, especially now that Sherlock's taken to wearing clothes all the time – he wears properly skinny trousers like they wear in punk bands, with big overlarge shirts that don't catch on the spikes across his shoulders, and the get-up serves to make Sherlock look like an _adult_.

An adult with a lot wrong with his face, certainly, but still an adult.

“Sherlock, I'm studying for my 11+.”

“You're not eleven plus.”

“I've not done the test yet, have I? It decides if I can get to go to a good school.”

“Your current one isn't sufficient?”

“It's a primary school, Sherlock. This is for secondary school. I've explained this.” Sherlock gives him a blank look. “You decided it wasn't important, didn't you?”

“I've perhaps deleted it.”

“For God's _sake_ , Sherlock-” John grumbles, and he jumps up, pulling the book out of the taller boy's hand and setting it on his desk again. “I go to primary school 'til I'm eleven. Then I go to comprehensive school, where I get qualifications before university, which is like how _you_ study, except everyone's already an adult, really. There's comprehensive schools 'round here, but my parents want to get me a place at a posh school in Essex.”

“I thought you didn't like _posh_ things?”

“Well, the thing about posh stuff, Sherlock, is that it's kinda the best stuff. It's just expensive.” Sherlock stares at him. He understands what money is, John knows – that bit he hasn't deleted, if only because it's so (strangely, according to Sherlock) important to humans. Bloody weird, if you ask John, not having _money_.

“And this posh school is expensive?”

“Yeah, but you can get grants and that for education. If you're clever.” Sherlock arches a white browbone at the idea of John being clever, and John gives him such a vicious look that Sherlock unarches it and turns his head away. “Will you help me?”

“Yes, alright,” Sherlock says huffily. “You needed only ask. I will always _help_ you, John.”

“If it suits you.”

“ _Always_.” comes the sharp insistence, as if it's a point of pride – and John supposes it is, really. For demons, he's learned, they might not have money, but they keep their promises quite seriously as a sort of capital, and there's magic in it, somehow. How, John's not exactly sure, but he's not really in the mood to ask, and he's fairly sure it'll not be on his tests. “Come, give me the book back.”

Sherlock's quite good at studying. He's got a way of saying things that makes them stay in John's head, and he's got the most obscenely good understanding of maths and physics and that – he's probably part of the reason John's so tremendous at those subjects, but he's pretty good at biology all on his own, and they talk about it a lot when they're in the woods together.

“Are we both having _such_ fun?” comes a low, mellifluous (stupid word, really) voice, and John groans as Sherlock smacks his own horny head against the wall.

“Get _out_ , Mycroft-”

“Just because Sherlock comes here doesn't mean you can-”

“I've no wish to see you-”

“It's _my_ room, you know, and Sherlock's actually my friend-”

“And John likely has no wish to see your _corpulent_ features-”

“And you never _knock!_ Don't you know you're meant to _knock_ , Mycroft? Even Sherlock knocks.”

“When I remember.”

“When he remembers.” Mycroft stares coldly at them both. He's got a particular way of staring coldly, has Mycroft, that makes you feel like your heart's just going to freeze in your chest and then maybe shatter when he makes a loud noise. John wasn't scared of him the first time they met, and John knew from the start that Mycroft was the sort of person (well, demon) that liked for people to be scared of him and was rather put-out and annoyed when they weren't. His last headmaster had been like that, and John hadn't liked the man one bit.

John actually does like Mycroft, sort of, a bit – he gets the impression that Mycroft's really quite important where he and Sherlock come from, and he acts like it when he's in John's room, but when Sherlock's not around he's a bit-- Well. Warmer, John supposes. Less mean.

But the thing is that his and Sherlock's time is for _them_ , and it's not for either of their big siblings to intrude upon – Mycroft _or_ Harry.

“Are you quite finished?”

“Well, we _have_ stopped talking,” Sherlock points out sarcastically, and he closes John's study book, passing it back to him. John turns in his seat at his desk to look at Mycroft, and Sherlock shifts his seat on the desk.

Mycroft wears clothes too, when he visits John's house, wears a three-piece tweed suit with a red tie, usually, or a grey one if he's in a bad mood. It's a grey tie today. The thing about the way Mycroft wears human clothes is that he takes on a sort of human face to wear them – his face is almost smooth to look at, and although he's a bit on the pale side you could easily think he was a normal person and not a demon at all, if you didn't know anything about them.

He'd made Mam think he was there to inspect the boiler, one time, though after that he'd always been quite careful to make himself invisible like Sherlock. Mam had thought he was a right weirdo – not wrong, really.

“You need to come home, please, Sherlock,” Mycroft says in a delicate tone. John frowns. Sherlock frowns too, John notices when he glances back at Sherlock to see: Mycroft _never_ says please. He says please to John, of course, says please and thank you and excuse me and all sorts, but he never says please to Sherlock, not in front of John's ears, anyway.

“Why?”

“I think you should go, Sherlock,” John says quietly, and Mycroft stares at him for a few moments with a stare of his eyes. They're smaller than Sherlock's, but they're like his – now and then, when Sherlock's doing magic or trying to work something out, his eyes sort of glaze over and he looks really far away, as if he's thinking about stuff inside a box in his own head. Mycroft's eyes look like that all the time.

“ _John_ , I shall go when I-”

“Sherlock.” Mycroft speaks seriously, and Sherlock doesn't flinch, because Sherock doesn't flinch, John's quite convinced, but he does sort of stiffen sometimes, and he's all stiff now. “We need to have a talk.”

“What about?”

“Not _here_.”

“He means not in front of me.” Mycroft glances at John, and then he smiles. Mycroft's smiles usually have a watery consistency, as if he doesn't really mean them even though he's a lot better at making them seem natural than Sherlock is, but today it looks alright. Warm, almost. John likes it when Mycroft smiles at him – he always has. It's like having tamed a dragon, sort of. Except that the dragon might still change its mind and eat you soon enough, probably.

“Quite right, John. Clever young man.”

“We're the same age, Mycroft,” John points out half-irritably, but Mycroft merely shrugs his tweed-clad shoulders in response, and Sherlock awkwardly shifts himself off the side of John's desk and walks towards John's bed. “Bye, Sherlock.”

“See you later,” Sherlock says, with a lot of significance in it that John doesn't really know the reason for: John supposes lots of things might have happened for Mycroft to want to take him aside. He acts like Sherlock's dad half the time, John thinks, because demons are older younger than humans are – he and Mycroft are the same age, John knows, but it's not the same. They're not the same at all.

Maybe someone's died. Or maybe it's do with puberty or whatever – John's dad had tried to talk to him about pubes this year, and it had been a very uncomfortable chat.

Do demons grow pubes when they go through puberty?, John wonders. He'll have to ask.

\---

“What are _pubes_?”

“Pubes. You know, hair. On your whatsit.”

“My _what_?”

“Your willy!” John says, flushing red to the cheeks, and Sherlock stares at him. “Your _penis_.”

“Oh, that,” Sherlock says, as if remembering it exists as an afterthought – which means, John supposes, that he does _have_ one. John's never really been sure: he never used to have a willy, but then, maybe he grew one in the past few years, since he started wearing clothes. “No. We only grow hair upon our heads.”

“What was Mycroft talking to you about then? Or can you not tell me?”

“Er, well, I shedded. In bed, last night.”

“Shedded,” John repeats, wondering for a moment if he's going to pretend to know what that means, and then he gives up and asks, “What's that?”

“Er, well, the upper layer of one's skill comes away, leaving a new, fresh layer in its wake.”

“Oh, like snakes? Geraint Little's got a snake.”

“I do hate it when you talk about that vile boy,” Sherlock complains. Geraint Little splashed Sherlock once with his bike wheel on account of not being able to see him, and Sherlock's never exactly forgiven him for it. John quite likes him, really: he's thirteen now, and he's _really_ cool. Not as cool as Sherlock, of course. “But yes, quite.” Sherlock seems mildly uncomfortable in this moment, and he pushes back his strange, wet hair, shifting on his heels as he glances uncertainly at John.

“What is it, then?”

“It's like your puberty. It's coming maturity,” Sherlock says, shifting his shoulders and rolling the sharp blades under his thick jumper, and John peers up at him curiously.

“Is this about your willy?”

“What is your _obsession_ with my penis? No!” Sherlock says irritably, and John has to snicker despite himself, ignoring the way Sherlock huffs and all but stamps his foot as he regards John irritably. “It's wings.”

“Wings?” John repeats. “Wings? What, like bird's wings?”

“No, not like _bird_ ' _s_ wings. I'm not a bird, am I, John?” John shrugs, and Sherlock seems to be restraining himself from snarling at him. He's very impatient, sometimes, and he's definitely impatient today, but John doesn't point that out. Sherlock grasps at the hem of his jumper and wriggles out of it, apparently struggling a bit to do so, and then he turns his back to John so John can see it.

John stares curiously at Sherlock. The wings are as white as the rest of him, made of a thick leathery skin: sharp, angular bones create the structure of them, and they're folded down against Sherlock's weird white back, over top of the little horns around his shoulders.

“Thought you said you shed your skin?” John asks.

“I did. They sort of grew underneath – underneath a protective layer of skin. It, er, it started to come apart yesterday evening.” John can't tear his gaze away from Sherlock's face as he turns to shift again, spreading out the wings with a quiet noise. He stretches them, stretching his neck at the same time, and he looks even more _massive_ with these extra limbs of his.

“Can you fly?” John asks, in a sort of wistful tone, and Sherlock frowns at him, tilting his head to the side.

“Of course. I'll be able to, anyway. Once I've learned.”

“How do you learn?” John can't even imagine it – is it like learning to ride a bike, he wonders? Sherlock's magnificent on a bike, John knows, able to do all sorts of tricks and that without even thinking about it, because John's seen him cycle right up the side of a wall. Sherlock shrugs his shoulders in the way that John has come to learn means that he knows something but doesn't want to tell John. “What? _How_?”

“There's a ridge in space, between our realm and that of the angels'.”

“A ridge?”

“A gorge. A valley.”

“You learn to fly by _jumping off a cliff?”_

“Well, how would _you_ learn?”

“I don't know! Lessons!” Sherlock clucks his tongue, rolling his eyes as he steps away. The wings give a sort of vague shuffle on Sherlock's back, and Sherlock grabs at John's 11+ revision booklet and sits himself on John's desk.

“The woman paid her bus fare. How do you spell fare?”

“Sherlock, you can't just-”

“How do you _spell_ it?”

“F-A-R-E.”

“Why are they making you sit this in English?” Sherlock asks suddenly, as if he's only just thought about it, and John wants to complain and argue and make Sherlock explain about his bloody _wings_ , but-- Well. Sherlock obviously doesn't want to talk about it.

“Er, they don't do it in Welsh.” comes the awkward answer. “Most things aren't.”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, and then he glances back to the booklet. “Put in the correct pronoun. The man to _blank_ I spoke was very tall.”

“To whom.”

“Correct.” John watches Sherlock for a few moments, watches his face as he stares resolutely down at the page – he can't help but wonder, actually, if maybe his growing wings is a bit like people growing pubes. It's private. Embarrassing.

John tries his best not to feel a bit guilty.

\---

“How did your exam go?” Sherlock asks when John comes in through the door to his bedroom, and John _grins_ at him, the smile bright and wide. Sherlock smiles back, and God, John does like his smile these days – it's so much more natural than it was those years ago when they first met, so much smoother. “Fantastic. _Now..._ ” Sherlock steps casually back towards the window, and as he does so his shirt and jumper sort of melt from his body as black liquid and form shoes on his feet.

“That's new,” John comments awkwardly, staring at Sherlock's new leather Oxfords.

“Mmm,” Sherlock says, spreading out his wings and gesturing for John to come closer with two fingers on each hand. John stares at him.

“ _No_!”

“Oh, yes,”

“No, Sherlock, I can't-”

“I can carry you: you're very small, very compact-”

“I'm not small!”

“You certainly are.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,”

“Don't you want to know what flying feels like?” It hadn't taken him long to learn, John knows, and even now he occasionally drops backwards out of John's window, closing the casement behind him as he flies off. It's brilliant to watch him, of course, better at night than during the day when he's a white silhouette against the black sky.

“Yeah,” John says softly. “Okay.” And so he shuffles forwards, dropping his book bag on the floor, and goes forward until they're almost together: Sherlock isn't really very good at hugs, given that he's sort of spiny and bony and doesn't always understand cues for stuff like that, but he hugs John now, wraps his arms tightly around John's back and lifts him up slightly, so that John has his arms wrapped around his body and his face is pressed against Sherlock's chest.

“Are you ready?”

“No.”

“Good,” Sherlock says, and falls.

John holds him so tightly he feels like Sherlock might just break as Sherlock drops him backwards, and he feels the whoosh of the fall past his ears, pulling his stomach out of his body as they drop and drop and drop-

And then he hears the magnificent flap of Sherlock's big, leathery wings, and they start going upwards.

John screams against Sherlock's chest as they fly, his eyes tightly closed and his cheek pressed as tightly as possible to the strange, hard bone of Sherlock's sternum. He laughs, after a little while, laughs at the strange sensation of falling and flying and oh, _God_ , this is the best thing he's ever felt-

“Open your eyes,” Sherlock says. John does. He looks to the side as Sherlock grips him tightly, and John notes now that his legs are tight against Sherlock's own, as if he's strapped them together; he probably has strapped them together, somehow, with magic. The big, green countryside below passes by impossibly quickly, and John can see Llyn Tegid below them as Sherlock turns them.

“Look at Celyn,” John says softly, but he can barely hear his own voice over the rush of the wind either side of them – it's cold, he thinks, and he sort of wishes he'd put on a jumper before he'd let Sherlock pick him up.

“It's beautiful, isn't it?”

“Better than your cliffs?”

“Oh, much better. There's only lava at the bottom of that valley.”

“ _Lava_?”

“Oh, hush, look at that water.” John wishes he could slap him, but he's a bit too stiff to let Sherlock go right now – he'd only fall.

“The water is nice.”

“You want me to drop you in it?”

“Sherlock!”

\---

John laughs, almost breathlessly, as he stumbles into his bedroom, and Sherlock climbs in through the window after him, wriggling through and shutting the window behind him. He gives a shiver of his wings, and rain clings to the leather in little drips and drops, setting them to spatter across the floor, and John lets out a noise of complaint before Sherlock waves a hand and evaporates it all into steam.

“That was _brilliant_.”

“You liked it, then?”

“I loved it!” John says, and he laughs, falling back onto his bed; Sherlock slides forwards, lying on his side beside John and watching him as he folds his wings against his back again. John's legs are a little bit weak, but he doesn't mind – all he can think of is how that rushing had felt in his ears, all that _wind_ \-- “I still can't believe you jumped off a cliff.”

“Mycroft would have caught me if I'd fallen,” Sherlock says, and John watches him for a few moments.

“Weren't your Mam and Dad there?” Sherlock glances at John, his expression strangely still for a few moments.

“No,” Sherlock says. “They haven't got wings.”

“Why not? Aren't you the same?”

“Yes, and no. We're the same species: my parents are demons also, but Mycroft and I are different from them. Different from everyone.” John watches his face as he goes quietly pensive, but he makes no complaint or comment, asks no more questions – it's not necessary, after all. There's no point in that.

“Is that lonely?” John asks.

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “That's why I'm here.”

“What will you do when I'm gone?” Sherlock peers at him, frowning.

“What do you mean, when you're gone?”

“Well, you know. If I've done well enough on my exams, I'll get into King Edward VI's grammar school, and we'll not stay here any more. We'll move to Essex.” Sherlock tilts his head to the side with a quiet click of noise.

“You didn't tell me that.”

“Yes, I _did_ , Sherlock, I told you six times – the posh school in Essex that I needed to pass my exams for!” Sherlock stares at him.

“Well, you can't go.”

“Of course I can. I have to – it's my parents' decision, not mine, anyway.”

“What about me?” Sherlock asks, and he stares at John.

“Er, well. You can come, I s'pose.”

“You can't move that portal. That's the only one I can use.”

“Oh,” John says. Something horrible floods through his chest, like some sort of terrible realization – and he can't _do_ anything about it. “Oh.”

\---

Sherlock stands in the centre of John's room, looking around at it. The frame of the bed is still in place (John's getting a new one), and there's a thin cushion over the window seat, but that's all that's there. It's completely empty – John's chest of drawers, his wardrobe, his radio and everything else, it's all gone, packed away in boxes in the back of the van with everyone else's stuff.

John watches him from the doorway, feeling guilt and sadness and grief and worry all mixed together in his chest, and he just wants to cry.

“I'm sorry,” John says softly. “I've got to go.”

“Mmm,” comes Sherlock's only response.

“I've-”

“Goodbye, John,” Sherlock says stiffly.

“But-”

“ _Get out_ ,” Sherlock hisses, and John stumbles back when Sherlock turns to look at him, his still eyes blazing and all his teeth out, his jaw large and wide and different to before – or, the same as before. Like when John had first met him, when he was only eight, before he'd made his jaw move to accommodate speaking English.

Sherlock says something obscene in a language John has never learned to understand, and John rushes down the stairs as fast as he can run.

“What the Hell are you crying for?” Harriet says sharply. “It's not like you've got any _real_ life you were leaving behind, not like _me_.”

“Shut up, Harry,” John says sharply. “You're just upset that there'll be enough girls in Essex for people to have standards. You'll be too ugly to catch anyone's eye.”

“ _Oi!”_

“John, Harry! Stop it!” Mam and Dad say as one, and John tries to stifle a sob as he looks back towards the house. In his bedroom, Sherlock is a white, tear-blurred blob between his open curtains, in John's bedroom.

John's best friend, once. But not any more.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please remember to comment and tell me what you think of the new chapter once you've read it! :)

**Author's Note:**

> **Welsh translations:**
> 
>   * _Beth Sydd O Dan Y Gwely?_ \- this is a well-known children's book by Mick Manning: the title translates to "What's under the bed?" It is not, in fact, about monsters.
>   * _Helo._ \- Hello.
>   * _Shwmae._ \- Hi.
>   * _Anghenfil_ \- Monster.
>   * _Ti'n siarad Cymraeg!_ \- You speak Welsh! (informal)
>   * _Rydych chi'n siarad Cymraeg?._ \- You speak Welsh? (formal) (ti and chi are a bit like the French tu and vous)
>   * _Mamgu._ \- Grandma.
>   * _Os gwelwch yn fawr._ \- Polite way of saying thank you.
> 



End file.
